especially the origination of a Free Church, would have been impossible events. How, we ask, was that result produced? Not, certainly, by the votes of ecclesiastical courts,––for mere votes would never have doubled the Cape Horn of the Church question; but simply through the conviction at length effectually wrought in the public mind, that our ministers were struggling and suffering, not for clerical privileges, but for popular rights,––not for themselves, but for others. And that conviction once firmly entertained, the movement waxed formidable; for elsewhere, as in the metropolis, popular support increased at least fivefold; and the question, previously narrow of base, and very much restricted to one order of men, became broad as the Scottish nation, and deep as the feelings of the Scottish people. But as certainly as the component strands of a cable that have been twisted into strength and coherency by one series of workings, may be untwisted into loose and feeble threads by another, so certainly may the majorities of our church courts, by a reversal of the charm which won for them the element of popular strength, render themselves of small account in the nation. They became strong by advocating, in the 6 Patronage question, popular rights, in opposition to clerical interests: they may and will become weak, if in the Educational one they reverse the process, and advocate clerical interests in opposition to popular rights.
Their country is perishing for lack of a knowledge which they cannot supply. Every seven years––the brief term during which, if a generation fail to be educated, the opportunity of education for ever passes away––there are from a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand of the youth of Scotland added to the adult community in an untaught, uninformed condition. Nor need we say in how frightful a ratio their numbers must increase. The ignorant children of the present will become the improvident and careless parents of the future; and how improvident and careless the corresponding class which already exists among us always approves itself to be, let our prisons and workhouses tell. Our country, with all its churches, must inevitably founder among the nations, like a water-logged vessel in a tempest, if this state of matters be permitted to continue. And why permit it to continue? Be it remembered that it is the national schools––those schools which are the people’s own, and are yet withheld from them––and not the schools of the Free Church, which it is the object of the Educational movement to open up and extend. Nor is it proposed to open them up on a new principle. It is an unchallenged fact, that there exists no statutory provision for the teaching of religion in them. All that is really wanted is, to transfer them on their present statutory basis from the few to the many,––from Moderate ministers and Episcopalian heritors, to a people essentially sound in the faith––Presbyterian in the proportion of at least six to one, and Evangelical in the proportion of at least two to one. And at no distant day this transference must and will take place, if the ministers of the Free Church do not virtually join their forces to their brethren of the Establishment in 7 behalf of an alleged ecclesiastical privilege nowhere sanctioned in the word of God.[1]
There is another important item in this question, over which, as already determined by inevitable laws, ecclesiastical votes, however unanimous, can exert no influence or control. They cannot ordain that inadequately paid schoolmasters can be other than inferior educators. If the remuneration be low, it is impossible by any mere force of majorities to render the teaching high. There is a law already ‘voted for’ in the case, which majorities can no more repeal than they can the law of gravitation. And here we must take the opportunity of stating––for there has been misrepresentation on the point––what our interest in the teachers of Scotland and of the Free Church really is. Certainly not indifferent to their comfort as men, 8 or to the welfare of their profession, as one of the most important and yet worst remunerated in the community, we frankly confess that we look to something greatly higher than either their comfort or the professional welfare in general. They and their profession are but means; and it is to the end that we mainly look,––that end being the right education of the Scottish people, and their consequent elevation in the scale, moral and intellectual. We would deal by the teachers of the country in this matter as we would by the stone-cutters of Edinburgh, were we entrusted with the erection of some such exquisite piece of masonry as the Scott Monument, or that fine building recently completed in St. Andrew Square. Instead of pitching our scale of remuneration at the rate of labourers’ wages, we would at once pitch it at the highest rate assigned to the 9 skilled mechanic; and this not in order, primarily at least, that the masons engaged should be comfortable, but in order that they should be masters of their profession, and that their work should be of the completest and most finished kind. For labourers’ wages would secure the services of only bungling workmen, and lead to the production of only inferior masonry. And such is the principle on which we would befriend our poor schoolmasters,––not so much for their own sakes, as for the sake of their work. Further, however, it is surely of importance that, when engaged in teaching religion, they themselves should be enabled, in conformity with one of its injunctions, to ‘provide things honest in the sight of all men.’ Nay, of nothing are we more certain, than that the Church has only to exert herself to the extent of the liabilities already incurred to her teachers, in order to be convinced of the absolute necessity which exists for a broad national scheme. Any doubts which she may at present entertain regarding the question of the necessity, are, in part at least, effects of her lax views respecting the question of the liability, and of her consequent belief that anything well divided is sufficient to discharge it. At the same time, however, it would be perhaps well that at least our better-paid schoolmasters should be made to reflect that the circumstances of their position are very peculiar; and that should they take a zealous part against what a preponderating majority of the laity of their Church must of necessity come to regard as the cause of their country, their opposition, though utterly uninfluential in the general struggle, may prove thoroughly effectual in injuring themselves. For virtually in the Free Church, as in the British Constitution, it is the ‘Commons’ who grant the supplies.
We subjoin the paper on the Educational Question, addressed by Dr. Chalmers to the Hon. Mr. Fox Maule, as it first appeared in the Witness. The reader will see 10 that there is direct reference made to it in the following pages, and will find it better suited to repay careful study and frequent perusal than perhaps any other document on the subject ever written:––
‘It were the best state of things, that we had a Parliament sufficiently theological to discriminate between the right and the wrong in religion, and to encourage or endow accordingly. But failing this, it seems to us the next best thing, that in any public measure for helping on the education of the people, Government were to abstain from introducing the element of religion at all into their part of the scheme; and this not because they held the matter to be insignificant,––the contrary might be strongly expressed in the preamble of their Act,––but on the ground that, in the present divided state of the Christian world, they would take no cognizance of, just because they would attempt no control over, the religion of applicants for aid,––leaving this matter entire to the parties who had to do with the erection and management of the schools which they had been called upon to assist. A grant by the State upon this footing might be regarded as being appropriately and exclusively the expression of their value for a good secular education.
‘The confinement for the time being of any Government measure for schools to this object we hold to be an imputation, not so much on the present state of our Legislature, as on the present state of the Christian world, now broken up into sects and parties innumerable, and seemingly incapable of any effort for so healing these wretched divisions as to present the rulers of our country with aught like such a clear and unequivocal majority in favour of what is good and true, as might at once determine them to fix upon and to espouse it.
‘It is this which has encompassed the Government with 11 difficulties, from which we can see no other method of extrication than the one which we have ventured to suggest. And as there seems no reason why, because of these unresolved differences, a public measure for the health of all––for the recreation of all––for the economic advancement of all––should be held in abeyance, there seems as little reason why, because of these differences, a public measure for raising the general intelligence of all should be held in abeyance. Let the men therefore of all Churches and all denominations alike hail such a measure, whether as carried